Discuss the author`s perception of women in two of the short stories you have read.

Back in the 1800s women had it pretty rough compared to men. There were poor women working in the cotton and woolen mills for 12 to 16 hours daily. Many lived six to a room and two to a bed in company boarding houses and were paid 2 pounds a week. Women were not permitted to give evidence in court, or have the right to speak in public before an audience. When a woman married, her husband legally owned all she had, including her earnings, her clothes and jewellery, and her children. If he died, she was entitled to only a third of her husband’s estate. So women couldn’t really be their own person, they hold little independence. Is it still like this today? Strange as it may seem, the family roles have not changed much in today's society. While women have more opportunities in home based employment, the traditional roles of women are still quite evident. They are still the caring provider and nurturer of young children, the comforter for the crying child and the feminine presence of the household. While the husband's role has changed into taking more part in household chores and the cooking and cleaning up responsibilities, they are still considered to be the head of the household in some families. But nowadays women and men should be pretty much equal. Women are allowed to vote, and they can go out and work on their own will. Males can even be nurses which were always stereotypically seen as a female’s job. So things have changed since the 1800s for women. Yet the traits of woman remain similar; women are still ____ as being rain and ___ for example.

It was men who wrote both of my chosen short stories. Thomas Hardy who wrote The Withered Arm was an English novelist and poet of the naturalist movement, although in several poems he displays elements of the previous romantic and enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural. He regarded himself primarily as a poet and composed novels mainly for financial gain. Most of his work, set mainly in the semi-fictional land of Wessex, is about characters struggling against their passions and circumstances. He had an admiration with the working class female, believing that they were ruled by their hearts and not their heads resulting in them being very emotional but at the same time possessing strength of character and this can easily be recognised in his work. Guy de Maupassant who wrote “The Necklace” was a popular 19th-century French writer and considered one of the fathers of the modern short story. As he grew up, he experienced a life of relative wealth and luxury. When war broke his family lost their fortune and he soon came to know the other side of life. He also had an admiration for the working class and was rather critical of the middle class female. Even though one writer is from England and the other is French, they both have similar thoughts and feelings on women of particular social classes.

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“The Necklace” tells the story of Madame Mathilde Loisel and her husband. When Mathilde was younger, she always imagined herself in a high social position with wonderful jewels. However, when she grows up, she has nothing and marries a lowly clerk who is obsessed with making her happy. Maupassant describes Mathilde as, “One of those pretty and charming girls, who had been born by an unlucky twist of fate into a lower middle-class family.” Mathilde was just a normal lower middle class woman of that century, she was nothing special, even though she thought she was. She did not have the money to go and buy expensive jewellery or clothes, so she dressed “simply”. Guy de Maupassant portrays her as never being happy with what she had, kind of a spoilt little girl, “She fretted constantly, feeling that she had been born for all the luxuries and finer things of life.” She resented her humble surroundings, she dreamt of far, far more, “Feeling that she was destined for better things in life.” She had a friend from her school days and she was so jealous that she couldn’t go see her because she had more things than her. When she returned from her house she was always sitting around the house depressed, so she just stopped going all together.

When Mathildes` husband does lots of begging at work, he is able to get two invitations to the Ministry of Education's party. Mathilde is upset, for she has nothing to wear; instead of being delighted, she threw the invitation down. She uses emotional blackmail to get what she wants, which is clothes, just like a typical girl would do now, just to try and get her own way. Her husband is unable to cope with her emotional outburst, “He lapsed into a stunned silence, lost for words, when he saw that his wife was crying. Two large tears were running down her face.” When she finally gets her own way, using money that her husband had been saving for something of his own interest, he lets Mathilde buy a fancy dress. You would think after all that she would be extremely ecstatic about this party, but Mathilde still isn’t happy, “As the day of the ball drew nearer, Madame Loisel still seemed downcast and anxious, although her new dress was ready.” She still cares for more, ‘I haven’t got a single piece of jewellery; not one stone to wear. It would almost be better not to go to this party at all.” But once again she gets her own way and her husband suggests that she should borrow something from that friend, Madame Jeanne Forestier. She complains about that too, but in the end up she finally agrees. When she’s at her friends she is picky and takes ages to make up her mind as to what she wants. She then selects out the most _____ jewel necklace that she can find and she achieves her dream, being the center of attention and the _____ of the ball.

After attending the Ministry of Education's party, Mathilde finds out that she has lost the necklace. Instead of her going to find the necklace, she leaves it all up to her husband. She’s so dramatic and sits at home feeling sorry for herself while her husband is the practical one, using his head to try to find the necklace. “He went out. Still in her evening dress, she sank in a chair, her mind and body numb with shock. Her husband returned at about seven o’clock in the morning. He had found nothing.”

In the first part of the story the author’s feeling towards Mathilde is very negative and there is a lot of criticism. However, in the second part of the story everything changes. His opinion of her becomes more positive. She worked ten years of her life getting the money to pay back the debt of the necklace; she has lost everything, her house, her clothes and most of all her looks. She learnt how easy it was to go down the social ladder, when it was everything to her to be going up it. However she’s transformed into a proud woman, who cares more about the things that are important in life rather than her appearance. After she’s paid off her debt, she meets her friend; her friend doesn’t even recognize her. She’s a proper working class woman now who looks far older than what she really is, because she has had a hard life. She walks straight up to Madame Jeanne Forestier and is proud of what she’s done, “She smiled with simple pride and joy.” This shows that Maupassant has respect for working class woman more than the spoilt middle classes who are selfish and only care about themselves.

The withered arm is a story set in 1826. From the beginning you can see were Thomas Hardy has sympathy for the working class woman, where he doesn’t say anything criticizing and negative against her comparing to what he said about Mathilde in the other story. Gertrude Lodge and Rhoda Brooks are the main characters in “The Withered Arm” playing two different roles, Gertrude being from a higher class and Rhoda from a lower class. The story is about Rhoda Brooks having an affair with Farmer Lodge and having an illegitimate son. This story really shows a lot of difference between the two classes because in them days if you had a child without being married you would be frowned upon, but nobody seemed to frown upon Farmer Lodge as he was from an upper class family and owned a farm. On the second page the author is making us feel sorry for Rhoda the way all the other maids are talking about her, “Tis hard for she.” He describes her as, “The radiance lit her pale cheek, and made her dark eyes, that had once been handsome, seem handsome anew.” This is indicating that she once was beautiful but threw the years she has changed. Rhoda is a woman of pride and she never once let Lodge know she was interested in his new wife; she liked to keep herself to herself. She is just curious of the father of her child’s new wife is, after all she always thought in the back of her mind there might be a bit of hope, if not for her then for her son to inherit something. The way Thomas Hardy believed “that woman were ruled by their heads not their hearts.” This ties in very well with Rhoda as she fell for Famer Lodge, if she had a great amount of common since she would of knew nothing serious would of ever happened with Lodge because of their social class. If you think about it, it was Farmer Lodges fault that Rhoda ended up living a harsh life and now is “a thin fading woman of thirty.”

Gertrude is a kind woman who is willing to help others no matter what class they are from. “Are you the poor boy who had to bring the heavy load from the market?” She asked Rhoda’s son, this shows that she cares and is willing to listen. “Il come and bring you some better boots and see your mother.” Rhoda wants to dislike Gertrude but she can’t help to like her. “Rhoda’s heart reproached her bitterly. This innocent young thing should have her blessing and not her curse.”

One night Rhoda had a dream about Gertrude taunting and teasing her, saying things like she’s the one who won Farmer Lodge and waving her wedding ring in her face. “The pressure of Mrs. Lodge’s person grew heavier; the blue eyes peered cruelly into her face; and then the figure thrust its left hand mockingly, so as to make the wedding ring it wore glitter in Rhoda’s eyes.” “Gasping for breath” Rhoda then lashes out and grabs the right arm in which she thought had been distorted. When the two woman meet for the first time Rhoda feels guilty as she feel the distortion on Gertrude’s arm is in fact her fault, but she also feels a bit of happiness at the same time because Gertrude isn’t perfect the way she was.

When the arm starts to get worse Gertrude gets paranoid and thinks Farmer Lodge finds her less attractive and becomes obsessed, she will do absolutely anything to get rid of this curse. “It makes my husband dislike no, love me less”. She is willing to do anything to cure herself; she then goes to a Conjuror which she would never have even thought of, despite the fact that she’s desperate.

During the time of this story

Thomas Hardy got his inspiration to write The Withered Arm as he knew of an old women, who in her youth cured of wasting disease by going to a convict’s corpse to have her “blood turned” like Gertrude Lodge did to have her arm cured. Conjuror Trundle that recommended the cure to Gertrude was also similar to a man in Hardy’s past, which he never met but heard of through his mother’s stories. Out of both stories and authors, I would prefer The Withered Arm, it’s got a better twist and I parts of the two woman characters.

Sarah Jane Farmiloe